A WEEK IN LONDON: Tower of London, Houses of Parliament, Charles Dickens and More, Guest Post by Jennifer Arnold

Houses of Parliament, London.

With many thanks to my daughter Jennifer for her report of her recent trip to London with my grandson, who met her there during the spring break from his semester abroad in Madrid. They packed a lot in during the week they were in London!

My son and I recently spent a week being tourists in London (Easter week 2025), visiting some of the major sites and learning about British history and contemporary life. One theme that seemed to connect the different sites we saw is the long history of England and the British empire, and the continued class conflict and power struggles.

The "tower", which is now a gift shop.

Tower of London. The Tower of London is really a castle, although it does have one building called “the tower”. This used to be where the kings and queens lived, and it represents both a long and fraught political history as well as the proud history of the royal family. 

Guards marching as a part of the ceremony of the password, which is solemnly shared with the guards.

There are informative and entertaining tours given by the “beef-eaters” (no one knows where that name came from), who live on site with their families and take care of the Tower. The charming man who gave our tour told us that he had been in the British military for 30+ years, serving as the principal violinist in their orchestra! As part of the tour, he told us about the many political prisoners and beheadings that took place nearby. This castle was the primary seat of English political and military power for hundreds of years. 

Metal monkey sculpture.

Artistic metal sculptures depict some of the animals that used to be kept at the tower of London; these animals from far-off places were given as gifts and kept in the tower, which was not always the best habitat.

Observatory ball.  Every day at exactly 1:00 pm Greenwich Mean Time, this red ball on the top of the observatory drops. It is visible from the Thames and allows ships to synchronize their clocks with the official time.

The Greenwich Royal Observatory   A little south of London is the Greenwich Royal Observatory. This observatory marks the location of the Prime Meridian, which is the line that is used across the world to count as the start of a “day”. The museum teaches about the astronomers and mathematicians who worked there, and the long endeavor to develop a method of calculating longitude accurately from a ship. This project took decades, spurred on by a monetary award offered by the British government.  There were many attempts along the way that weren’t successful but nevertheless made scientific and engineering contributions. Ultimately the solution was to develop a clock that would be accurate within seconds when aboard a ship. You can read more about this in Dava Sobel’s book Longitude.

Royal Observatory.. This line marks the prime meridian.

It’s striking how the financial support of the English government was critical to both the scientific advancements as well as the social infrastructure of marking time consistently across the globe.  This is an early example of a federally funded grant, and it accrued power to England.

Houses of Parliament. This photo was taken in one of the only places we were allowed to take pictures.

The Houses of Parliament . Unfortunately, we were visiting during Easter week, which is a holiday in England, so we couldn’t see the houses of parliament in action. But we still could enter the space and take an audio tour. British Parliament includes both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Originally these parliamentary roles were only open to men of wealth, but later they opened up to “commoners”, and today the only real political power lies in the House of Commons. But we also learned that the House of Lords plays an important negotiating role, precisely because they do not have the same level of power as the House of Commons. The rooms dedicated to the House of Lords are also a lot more ornate than the rooms for the House of Commons!

The 80’s: Photographing Britain at the Tate Britain.  This powerful exhibit depicted several major class struggles in the 70’s and 80s, including union strikes, the coal miner’s strike, and the struggle for recognition of the LGBTQ+ community.

Dickens Museum

Charles Dickens Museum . This museum is built in one of the houses where Dickens lived in the 1800’s, in a beautiful and somewhat secluded neighborhood of London. We learned that Dickens himself came from a financially insecure background, which was blamed on his father’s inability to manage his debts. At age 12 Dickens was sent to work in a factory doing grueling and uninspiring work. This undoubtedly motivated the themes in his novels, which portrayed the poor in a positive light and championed their cause. We also learned that Dickens’ had a flamboyant and entertaining personality. He enjoyed financial success during his lifetime due to the popularity of his writings, and he frequently entertained at his house and performed his books.

Handel House. The room where Handel entertained visitors and musicians, next door to the room where he did most of his composing.

Handel and Hendrix House .  In an unusual twist of fate, two major musicians lived in neighboring houses in London at very different times. The composer George Frederic Handel rented a house in the early 1700s, where he composed his famous Handel’s Messiah and many other works, and from where he developed his career in London. 

The bedroom of Jimi Hendrix’s flat.

Two centuries later, Jimi Hendrix rented a flat next door where his career took off in the 1960’s.

 Note: Next week look for Jennifer's post about their day trip from London to Oxford.

London: Day Trip to Greenwich

Boat Trip on the Thames
(Excerpt from my diary of our three month stay in London in the fall of 1998.)

Tower Bridge, London

Our excursion on Saturday was a trip to Greenwich to see the Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory.  The most scenic way to get there is by boat, which is what we did, leaving from the Charing Cross pier, and traveling past the Tower of London, London Bridge, the new Globe theater, and the Docklands development to Greenwich. 

The Prime Meridian, Where Time Begins and East Meets West

Caroline Straddling the Prime Meridian

    Our interest in going to Greenwich was to see for ourselves the Prime Meridian, the exact division between the eastern and western hemispheres, and to take a photo of ourselves astride the line.  (This is be a companion piece to our photo of us on the Equator that we took in Africa in 1971!)  The location of the line is at the Royal Observatory, on top of a hill overlooking the river.  The Observatory is no longer used to look at the stars because the sky in London is too smoggy, so it has been turned into a museum detailing its history as an observatory and its involvement in the search for longitude. 

Finding Longitude

The Royal Observatory, Now a Museum

The problem of longitude became acute in the age of sea exploration.  Although ships at sea could fairly easily calculate their latitude, by measuring the angle to the north star or southern cross, they had no way of measuring how far they were to the east or west.  As a result, countless ships were wrecked because they weren’t where they thought they were.  The solution to the problem involved both accurate measurements of the stars and the development of a clock that would keep accurate time even on a boat rolling and pitching in heavy seas.  If you knew the time and your position under the stars, you could figure your distance east or west from a predetermined line.  And where should that line be?  Of course, in England!  For over a hundred years the rest of the world has used this as the standard as well. 

The Millennium Dome
    Greenwich is advertising itself as the place where the Millennium begins and is building a giant dome, called the Millennium Dome, that will be a sort of world’s fair celebrating the year 2000.  It’s true that the world’s time zones are all based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is calculated from the Prime Meridian, and to that extent the Millennium starts here, but it seems to me that when the year 2000 arrives, it’s actually going to be at the international date line.  This doesn’t seem to bother the people building the dome though.

Atlas of the Stars

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

   Among the more interesting historical tidbits at the museum was the account of the first Royal Astronomer, Sir John Flamsteed, who worked for years to compile an atlas of the stars.  It was a tedious job and people got tired of waiting for him to finish.  So, Sir Isaac Newton, without getting Flamsteed’s permission, published his incomplete results.  Flamsteed was so infuriated that when the book was published he bought 300 of the 400 copies and burned them!  I wonder how many other authors have wished they could do that when they weren’t happy with the way their book was published?

Ruler of the Seas

The Cutty Sark, Docked in Greenwich. The world's last tea clipper ship.  Currently closed for conservation, it will reopen to the public in the Spring of 2012

   The town of Greenwich is devoted to boats and maritime themes and has shops displaying ships in bottles and tea towels printed with the explanation of why ships are called “she.”  And if you didn’t think the Lord Nelson was an important figure in British history, then a trip to the Maritime Museum will convince you otherwise.  A whole floor is devoted to Nelson and features a giant painting of the battle of Trafalgar by William Turner.   Nelson’s death is treated with religious reverence.


Sun and Rain

Geese in Regent's Park, London

 The day of our trip to Greenwich was sunny and nice and we picnicked on sausage rolls and ginger beer in the park, but when we woke up back in London on Sunday morning, our nice weather had disappeared.  It has been rainy and cool the last two days.  It stopped for a while yesterday morning, so we walked through Regents Park (not far from our flat in St. John's Wood) and fed the ducks and geese.  Thousands of waterbirds live in the park, both wild birds and some exotic species that are bred there, and they are all well trained to beg for food.  It’s a good demonstration of the pecking order in nature. There is also a nest of blue herons in the park, and even they will come quite close.

 Recommended Reading:  After I returned from Greenwich, I read Dava Sobel's book, Longitude:  The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, a fascinating account of John Harrison, a clockmaker, who solved the problem of finding longitude but reaped only part of the reward for his work.